Rats
by kialajaray
Summary: Who knew that the disgusting little fur balls could actually be good for something?


**Ok, there's really no reason for it to have taken this long for me to post this. I kept procrastinating and when I finally wanted to finish writing it, my free trial of microsoft office had run out. (Why in the hell doesn't it come on the computer?) But then I had to buy it. But if you're a college student you can get it all for just $60**. **Just google the ultimate steal and you should find it. But enough of this, on with the story.**

summary:Who knew the disgusting fur balls could actually be good for something.

* * *

This was the last time that she was going to let Little Miss Lila talk the whole class into cleaning up some run down old abandoned house, Helga thought as she shoved more debris in the garbage bag with gloved hands.

"It would so ever be a help to the community," Helga mocked as she kicked a molded piece of wood away.

Going over to the window, she looked out at the bright beautiful day. Instead of being outside playing baseball, well maybe not baseball, she hadn't played the since-

Anyway she and her friends were stuck cleaning this barely held together pile of match sticks.

Not that the boys minded of course, Helga thought as she turned away from the window and surveyed the attic at large. Even though it had been years since P.S. 118, they still clamored after Lila like she was the last girl on Earth. Anything to please their Aphrodite was just fine with them.

Don't get Helga wrong, she wasn't jealous. She was the furthest away from it. All that attention all the time would make her go crazy. You wouldn't be able to do anything without wondering who was watching. What if she wanted to dig in her nose or pick a wedgie? She gave a small smile at the thought of the boys' reactions if dear sweet Lila let one rip in class one day. But if she saw a rat, she was going to personally kill Lila very slowly. She figured that she should be safe about that. They were usually in dark places like basements. Right?

Taking a step, she stumbled when her foot went straight threw the wood. Lord, karma came back around fast. And with her luck, she'd fall straight to the basement. She would come back as a ghost and haunt the hell out of Lila since it was her fault she was in the house at all. Arnold too, since it was his fault that she was hiding in the attic where no one else wanted to go.

Thinking about what happened a few weeks prior still made Helga blush. She was sure that she should be flattered but she was…she didn't think that there was a word for mortifying and embarrassed mixed into one, and if there was, she didn't know it.

She tried not to think of the day on the baseball field, but just like all the times before, her mind replayed it.

They had been playing another game of baseball in Gerald Field like they had hundreds of times before. She and Arnold had ended up on the same team and thankfully Helga had been suppressing the urge to burst into poem whenever she saw him for years and if she tried hard enough, she could ignore him.

Helga's team was up by a point and the other team was at bat with the bases loaded in the ninth inning. The other team had two outs and if they were able to get Harold, who was up to bat, out they would win. She knew that Harold usually hit the ball right down the center of the field, but she was in right field and Arnold, who she didn't hold out much hope for, was center field.

So when the ball soared in the air through center field just like she had thought, Helga raced to catch the ball, not paying attention to anything else. Apparently, so was Arnold and when they collided, neither one of them saw it coming. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back, staring into Arnold's beautiful eyes while he was lying on top of her.

They lost the game, but that went of unnoticed to her because of what happened next. Opening her mouth to yell at him for making her miss the ball, Arnold braced his body with his arms and opened his mouth, and Helga was sure it was to apologize and she was sure that she would have let him. But then she felt _it_.

Now Helga wasn't ignorant or naive and she had taken the infamous health class in seventh grade just like everyone else so she knew that sometimes boys couldn't control when _those_ things happen, especially when they wake up. But for her to cause it and from Arnold? She didn't think that she had ever caused it to happen to any boy, well maybe Brainy in some sick way but it was something Helga still couldn't wrap her head around weeks afterward.

After quickly moving from under him, she saw that his face was just as red as she was sure that hers was. "Uhh…Helga," he started but Helga quickly turned away from him and made her excuses to everyone else and left.

To his credit, Arnold did try to talk to her about it afterward, but Helga had avoided him at every turn. Thankfully she didn't have any classes with him, but he was proving to be worse than Brainy was with sneaking up on her all the time. Once she actually pushed Ruth McDougal in front of him and sped off in the other direction.

Picking up more trash, she didn't know what he could possibly say to her, or even want to say to her for that matter. Some stuttered out apology that would leave them both red in the face and never speaking to each other again was all the Helga could see coming from it. If she avoided him long enough maybe he would forget.

Though it didn't seem likely with the way should catch him staring at her. First the looks started out as confused, most likely from him not being able to understand why he reacted that way to her. They quickly became frustrated. Helga smiled as she remembered the flabbergasted look on his face she saw when Ruth, who had developed a crush on him, starting to gush over him as she made her get away.

After frustration the looks turned into something totally unexplainable to Helga. It confused her because she had watched Arnold for so long when they were younger that she knew by just a glance what he was feeling. But when she would see him staring at her, it was a look that she had never seen before on his face. A look that made her stomach go haywire.

Stuffing the trash into the bag, Helga plopped down on a crate and rested her chin on her hand. It was crazy, but as much as she loved Arnold and always hoped that they would be together, she never really expected it to happen. She always assumed that Arnold would forever have his prefect princess complex and pine away forever for Lila while she pined away for him. If Lila was the kind of person that he wanted, how could she compete? She even had tried when she posed as Cecile. 'That turned out great', she thought sarcastically. She almost got caught and what would she have done then? It didn't even matter that he had lost his crush for the girl a few years prior.

She wasn't Arnold's type and she had come to terms with that, but he had to go and change the rules and now she was confused as what to do about it.

"Aren't you supposed to be cleaning," a voice from behind her asked.

She should have known that he was going to figure out where she was sooner or later. "Hey Arnold," she said turning to face the boy of her dreams. She had been she preoccupied with her thinking that she failed to hear his steps on the stairs. "And I was cleaning," she added. "I was just taking a break to think."

"And what had you so distracted that you didn't hear me coming? I was worried that you would realize it was me and jump out of the window."

Glaring at him, she said, "I was thinking about nothing that you would want to hear and I have no clue why you would think that."

"Sure you don't," he said walking to the crate she was sitting on. "My guess is that it's probably the same reason why you threw Ruth at me and ran away."

"I was simply trying to help the two of you out," she told him innocently.

"Oh really," he said, obviously not believing her. "Helping out how?"

"Well, Ruth has been trying to sink her teeth into you all year and since she's a senior her time is running out and you used to like so I figured that I'd kill two birds with one stone."

Sitting down in front of the crate, Arnold looked at Helga for a few moments. "I liked Ruth for, what? About a month in the fourth grade? I really don't think that justifies you throwing a person at me just so you can avoid a conversation."

"I don't see why I should talk to you if I don't want too," she said defiantly. "I know what you want to talk about and I don't want to talk about it. You're my friend and you should understand that."

"I understand that," he told her with an aggravated sigh. "But since I'm trying to be more, I don't accept it."

Helga pinned him with an intense stare. "What did you say," she asked, afraid to believe what she had heard.

"I didn't stutter," he said as he stared just as intensely at her. "I want to be more than friends with you, but you're making so damn hard that I'm almost ready to give up."

Helga felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. It took everything in her not to jump on Arnold and kiss him until she couldn't breathe. Hadn't she just thought that this would never happen? Her dreams of being with Arnold were finally coming true…

But being the natural born pessimist that she was, she couldn't help but wonder as to why Arnold was interested in her now. The only thing that had occurred between them was-"Is this because of what happened at the baseball field," she asked angrily.

"What," he asked, confused. Rising, he took a step back when she sprang to her feet. "Is you sudden interest in me because of what happened on Gerald Field?"

"What," he asked, confused. "No. If anything, the fact that I want to be more than friends with you caused what happened. And I've been _trying_ to apologize to you about that, but you won't let me."

"I don't want your apology," she told him. "It'll only make things awkward."

"I don't care," he shot back. "I'm going to apologize for it either way."

"Well, I don't accept it."

Arnold gave a frustrated sigh. "Why do you have to be so difficult?"

"I'm not being difficult, I-"

_Squeak _

Helga abruptly stopped, dread washing over her.

"Helga," Arnold asked moving closer to her. "What's wrong?" He had obviously seen all the color leave her face.

"D-did you hear that," she asked stutteringly.

"Hear what," he asked "All I heard was you talking about…"

Helga tuned him out when she heard barely audible scurrying from across the room that was getting closer and closer.

"Helga," Arnold said forcibly, making her look at him. Looking down at her hands, he grew concerned. "You're shaking."

"I-I am," she said distractedly, trying to determine how close the scurrying was to her. "Arnold," she forced herself to say. "C-can we go downstairs?"

"Helga, you're obviously terrified about something. Just tell me-"

_Squeak._

Arnold was cut off because an instant after Helga heard another squeak something ran across her foot and she screamed louder than she ever had before. "Pick me up," she cried to him, trying to crawl up his body.

"What the hell? Helga, what's wrong with you?"

"ARNOLD MATTHEW BARTLETT, IF YOU DON'T PICK ME UP RIGHT NOW, I WILL KILL YOU!"

Arnold, looking a little shocked, quickly hooked his arms behind her legs and her into his arms.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Helga looked down to see two enormous rats running where her feet had just been. Well maybe to someone else they wouldn't have been all that big, but to Helga they were enormous. "R-rats," she sputtered out to him. "I h-hate r-rats."

Looking at the floor, Arnold stepped away from the rats. Turning his gaze back to her, Helga thought that something was wrong when she saw that he was contorting his face. Just before she was going to ask him if something was the matter, she heard a snort.

The jerk was actually laughing at her! She couldn't believe it. "You're laughing at me," she told him accusingly.

He was only able to get out, "No, I'm not," before he threw back his head and laughed, thankfully still holding onto her.

Helga was ready to say so very vulgar things to Arnold when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

Pushing at his chest, she said, "Put me down."

Griping her tighter, he said, "What if the rats are still around?"

Before she could argue with him further, Gerald and Phoebe appeared in the attic doorway.

Taking a few seconds to process what they were seeing, their friends just stared at them.

Clearing her throat, Phoebe said, "We're interrupting, excuse us."

Helga started to push against Arnold's chest, trying to get down. "It's not what it-"

She was able to get out before Gerald said, "Man, it's about time. If I had to listen to him complain about Helga ignoring him one more time, I was going to scream."

"Hush Gerald," the petite Asian girl told her boyfriend. "You're embarrassing them."

Letting his girlfriend pull him to the door, he said, "You weren't the one who had to hear him talk about taking Helga on a date for months. And then after what happened at the baseball field…"

Gerald's voice faded as Phoebe closed the door.

Helga looked into Arnold's face as he eased her down to find his cheeks reddening and his gaze averted.

"For months," she asked him skeptically.

"You aren't exactly the easiest girl to ask on a date," he told her. "How do you know my last name? Or even my middle? Gerald doesn't even know that."

"I know a lot of things about you," she only said to him.

"I think that we need to have a long discussion."

"I don't," she told him as she made her way to the door. Turning the knob, she pulled only to find that the door wasn't budging. Trying again, she door still didn't move.

"Damn," she muttered.

"What did you say," Arnold asked her from behind her.

Turning, she sighed and said, "Well, it looks like we're stuck up here so you'll get your discussion after all."

Giving her a grin that she hadn't seen since they were children, Arnold said, "Good, but just to let you know, I won't stop until I have at least a date out of you."

Walking back over to the crate, she sat down and looked a t him. "You just might get it," she told Arnold, understanding the whole time that they both knew that all they had to do was call to their classmates downstairs to get out of the attic.

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**Alright, yes I know that it ended kind of incomplete but after I posted my Valentine's one everyone said that it was predictable so I didn't write it with my usual mushy ending. And the...problem of the story was totally different from what I usually write. I don't remember where I got the idea from. Probably my perverted side. And I'm sorry, I have some bad news. For those who like my stories, this is going to be the last one for awhile. I realized that I've been spending A LOT of time with and I've been neglecting my school work and I'm on a scholarship and I have to maintain a 3.2 I believe it is and in all my 5 classes I don't have higher than a C in all my classes. So yeah, I REALLY need to prioritize. So probably until spring break (Easter for me) I won't be writing. Maybe reading and reviewing, but not writing. Sorrie to the people who like my stories. **

**kialajaray**

**p.s. Please review. I would love to hear what you think about Arnold's 'reaction' to Helga.  
**


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